Levine: White Sox Will Be In The Division Hunt, Royals Skipper Predicts

By Bruce Levine-- 

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The White Sox will be in the division race with the three other contenders in the American League Central, according to none other than Ned Yost, the manager of the reigning champion Kansas City Royals.

"Absolutely, this will go right until the end," Yost said Saturday. "This will keep going this way all summer long. We do have good teams in this division. Everybody has had their ups and downs so far this year."

Yost, of course, is also referring to his club, which is now spinning in a down cycle of an eight-game losing streak. Like the White Sox, the other divisional foes have gone through the same rough patches in the initial one-third of the season. The White Sox have just burrowed out of their own free fall of losing by winning two in a row after previously losing 20 of 26.

"I don't think anybody is running away with anything here," Yost said. "This will be a hotly contested division all season."

Once with a commanding six-game lead in the AL Central and a 23-10 record, the White Sox have now changed their roster and added five different players in the last four days. Meanwhile, the Royals have lost their left fielder, third baseman and catcher in a short period of time.

Winning a baseball game and sustaining good play has proved elusive this year in the AL Central.

"It's such an intriguing game, because you just don't know from day to day what is going to occur," Yost said. "We just came off of a homestand where we went 6-0. We were scoring runs all over the place. We went on the road and scored four runs in the first game and then three in the next six. It's crazy how quickly things turn around. For us, it did literally in a day, going from red hot as a team to pretty cold as a team. You just hope you can reverse it and score enough runs to win."

Those words come from a manager who's directed his team to two straight AL pennants and a title in the last two season. That's how tenuous baseball seasons and streaks can be.

Yost has the knowledge of his players having had the ultimate success and being able to use that as a springboard back to the top.

"No doubt," he said. "Our players have been through this before. They also have experience coming out of the other end of a downturn. They know they are going to do it again."

White Sox manager Robin Ventura is unsure what he has going right now, after the extreme ups and big falls to this strange season so far.

"Because of our roster changes, you are a little unsure and it's a little different," Ventura said. "We will probably know by the All-Star break what we have and what we have coming. We will have a guy like Justin (Morneau, just signed as a free agent). You don't know how that plays with your team. It is a good thing to have him, but you don't have him right now. So you don't know how that is going to work."

Bruce Levine covers the Cubs and White Sox for 670 The Score and CBSChicago.com. Follow him on Twitter @MLBBruceLevine.